Points on Landry and D-Line

Correct me if im wrong, but what makes Williams D unique is that he builds the D from the outside in rather then the inside out. He believes that blitzing and misdirection is the best way to create presure, and as we all know because of injuries to our secondary last year AND because of how bad AA was in pass coverage, we couldnt blitz as much cause we had to keep everyone in pass coverage therefore we could not get preasure on the passer. Now with the depth in the secondary, we will be able to send more guys in which will create more ints for rogers to drop and big play opprotunites for playmakers like taylor, washington, and hopefully landry to capitalize on. I believe that we will be back in the top 10 in D.

You are correct sir. GW's D works from the outside in. He's always brought pressure with corners, safeties and linebackers. Injuries were definitely a factor in what hand-cuffed what he could do last year scheme-wise.

No matter how Williams' scheme works, you can't have bozos at the D-line.

You are correct sir. GW's D works from the outside in. He's always brought pressure with corners, safeties and linebackers. Injuries were definitely a factor in what hand-cuffed what he could do last year scheme-wise.

Yes this is all true, but the #1 premise of GW's system is stopping the run on 1st down so that the offense has to deal with 2nd and longs and then 3rd and longs. Then and only then can you feel comfortable bringing the noise with the exotic blitzes. He doesn't bring that ruckus on 2nd and 3.

He had a choice to make; rely on Prioleau, Springs, Fox, and Stoutmire to provide the coverage necessary to bring pressure from other places; or rely on the injury prone Joe Salave'a, undersized Kedric Golston, and the raw Anthony Montgomery to stop the run next to Griffin.

He chose to shore up the secondary. There were two problems on defense, and only one could be solved by picking at 6. Trading down to address both problems would have been much better; but since that wasn't possible, I can't really express a beef on Landry because he'll solve one of the problems. It's just I still think we're vulnerable to the run and won't be any better than middle of the pack on D this year because of it.

Of course, middle of the pack on D, combined with the offense we have, may be good enough to make the playoffs.

As we all know in our heart of hearts, our hopes ride on Jason Campbell.

I think Fletcher is going to make more of a difference in the middle than people think.

It will all depend on how our current group at DL performs. If they can regroup and recapture some of the magic from 2005 we'll be ok. If they pick up where they left off last year or worse, of course we're in trouble.

Gibbs seems to think most of the defensive problems stemmed from coverage issues last year, so we'll see who was right by year's end.

Personally I don't see the cupboard being as bare along the d-line as some people seem to think.

It will all depend on how our current group at DL performs. If they can regroup and recapture some of the magic from 2005 we'll be ok. If they pick up where they left off last year or worse, of course we're in trouble.

Gibbs seems to think most of the defensive problems stemmed from coverage issues last year, so we'll see who was right by year's end.

Personally I don't see the cupboard being as bare along the d-line as some people seem to think.


I agree here. I don't think the Dline is solely repsonsible for the breakdown in '06, nor are we in need of a major overhaul.

I think the additions of Landry, Fletch, and the rest of the gang flat out tackling, like football players are supposed to, will go a long ways in helping us getting back to that '04 form.

Personnel wise, our defensive line as it stands now is hardly any different from the line we had in '04 when we ranked 3rd overall on defense. The difference maker was Antonio Pierce.

I agree with TMC, London Fletcher should make a large impact on the team. He's a strong tackler himself, but his true value comes in the ability to get guys lined up in GW's defense a la Antonio Pierce. Fletcher could get the line back to form.

Also, Gibbs' more relaxed style this offseason on workouts will hopefully keep the players fresher and injury free.

These are all reasonable points, they all happen to be optimistic. I'm hopeful they pan out.

Landry is a good pick for one of the holes we needed to fill and I am not worried as much that the D-line wont get sacks like last year. What absolutely scares me is that teams ran all over us last year and that was our biggest problem on defense. We haven't done much to try to fix that problem by getting run stoppers on the D-line. Salavea may still have a good year left in him and Montgomery might step it up but its a risky gamble to trust that. Also Fletcher is a tackling machine and should help out with the run to some extent but if teams run off tackle we could have a tough time trying to stop them. All i'm saying is that we are a run first on O, stop the run on D kind of football team and we didn't focus in on that gameplan with the way we drafted this year. I am hoping that we can pick someone up to help us out but if not I am keeping my fingers crossed that everyone can outperform their expectations.

I dunno about fletcher to be honest. I hope he still has something left in the tank. But, with an old crappy D-line, these old LB's might suffer. We really needed Okoye in my opinion, young, big and fast, woulda helped fletcher a lot